The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen [66]
"Why specially, dear?"
"Some people are coming in."
"But don't they almost always give a rap on the glass?"
Daphne looked hangdog (her variation of coyness). Her eyes seemed to run together like the eyes of a shark. She said: "Mr. Bursely talked about dropping in."
"Mr. Who?" Mrs. Heccomb said timidly.
"Bursely, Mumsie. B, U, R, S, E, L, Y."
"I don't think I have ever—"
"No," Daphne yelled patiently. "That is just the point. He hasn't been here before. You don't want him to see that bell. He's from the School of Musketry."
"Oh, in the Army?" said Mrs. Heccomb, brightening. (Portia knew so little about the Army, she immediately heard spurs, even a sabre, clank down the esplanade.) "Where did you meet him, dear?"
"At a hop," said Daphne briefly.
"Then some of you might like to dance tomorrow night, I expect?"
"Well, we might put the carpet back. We can't all just stick around.—Do you dance?" she said, eyeing Portia.
"Well, I have danced with some other girls in hotels..."
"Well, men won't bite you." Turning to Mrs. Heccomb, Daphne said: "Get Dickie to get Cecil... Goodness, I must rush!"
She rushed, and soon was gone down the esplanade. Daphne used nothing stronger than "goodness" or "dash": all the vigour one wanted was supplied by her manner. In this she was unlike Anna, who at moments of tension let out oaths and obscenities with a helpless, delicate air. Where Anna, for instance, would call a person a bitch, Daphne would call the person an old cat. Daphne's person was sexy, her conversation irreproachably chaste. She would downface any remark by saying, "You are awful," or simply using her eyes.... When she had quite gone; Portia felt deflated, Mrs. Heccomb looked dazed. For Portia, Daphne and Dickie seemed a crisis that surely must be unique: she could not believe that they happened every day.
"Remind me to go to Spalding's," said Mrs. Heccomb.
At this moment the sun was behind a film, but the sea shone and the lounge was full of its light. Mrs. Heccomb, to air the place after breakfast, folded back a window on to the sun porch, then opened a window in the porch itself. A smell of seaweed stiffening and salting, of rolls of shingle drying after the sea, and gulls' cries came into Waikiki lounge. One's first day by the sea, one's being feels salt, strong, resilient and hollow—like a seaweed pod not giving under the heel. Portia went and stood in the sun porch, looking out through its lattice at the esplanade. Then she boldly let herself out by the glass door. A knee-high wall with a very high and correct gate cut the Heccombs' lawn off from the public way. Before stepping over the wall (which seemed, in view of the gate's existence, a possible act of disrespect) Portia glanced back at the Waikiki windows. But no one watched her; no one seemed to object. She walked across to the lip of the esplanade.
Seale sea front takes the imperceptible curve of a shallow, very wide bay. Towards the east horizon, the coast rises—or rather, inland hills approach the sea: an imposing bluff is crowned by the most major of Southstone's major hotels. That gilt dome, the flying flags receive at about sunset their full glory, and distantly glitter, a plutocratic heaven, for humbler trippers on the Seale esplanade. On sunless clear mornings, the silhouette of the Splendide seems to be drawn on the sky in blue-grey ink.... On from Seale towards Southstone, the forcible concrete seawall, with tarmac top, stretches empty for two miles. The fields the sea wall protects drop away from it, unpeopled and salty, on the inland side. The abstract loneliness of the dyke ends where the Seale-Southstone road comes out to run by the sea.
West of Seale, you see nothing more than the marsh. The dead flat line of the coast is drawn out into a needle-fine promontory. The dimming gleaming curve is broken only by the martello towers, each smaller, each more nearly melted by light. The silence is broken only by musketry practice on the ranges. Looking west of Seale, you see the world void, the world suspended, forgotten, like a past phase of thought. Light's shining shifting slants and veils and own interposing shadows make a world of its own.... Along this stretch of the coast, the shingle has given place to water-flat sands: the most furious seas only slide in flatly to meet the martello towers.